Let me preface this story by saying that Calvin is perfectly fine. We had a very calm and relaxing day today which I desperately needed

Calvin is a very intense child. When he’s happy, he’s very happy and when he’s upset, he’s very upset. It’s not uncommon for him to get so upset that he is completely breathless with rage.

With Calvin’s new schedule, I feed him breakfast and then take him to daycare for the morning. Then I pick him up after work. When we get home, I usually make supper while feeding him a snack in the high chair and then go to the park to play for an hour. After that, we get home and I finish up supper preparations, feed him, give him a bath, and then feed him a night-time bottle right before bed. Yesterday, everything was progressing nicely on schedule until bath time.

Calvin currently loves “climbing” stairs. He can do this on his hands and knees but he much prefers goose-stepping up the stairs while holding our hands. Last night was no exception. Then, toddler-like, he wanted to climb the stairs again, and again instead of taking a bath. Well, I decided it was bath time so I put him in the crib while I got all the bath stuff together. Calvin was very unhappy and started screaming. However, as I mentioned before, Calvin is a pretty intense child so this wasn’t surprising. While in the bathroom, I heard him let out one of his bloodcurdling screams that almost always preface him being so upset he’s silent for a minute or two. I listened with one ear waiting for him to continue with the scream.

He didn’t.

Apprehensive about the silence, I went to investigate. I figured that Calvin had finally learned how to crawl out of his crib. Instead, I found my baby lying face down on the crib mattress completely motionless. I turned him over to discover that his face was bright purple and his lips were blue. He had stopped breathing.

I panicked. I grabbed Calvin from the crib and screamed for my husband. This got Jaeger’s attention but all he could tell from downstairs was that something was wrong. I think I also screamed something like “Calvin! Blue!” while frantically wondering what I should do. I had taken infant CPR and I theoretically knew that with infants you are suppose to start CPR immediately instead of getting help first. However, I was confused because I knew that he had stopped breathing because he was upset, not because he was choking. I wasn’t sure if normal CPR procedure applied or not. By the time all this flickered through my head Calvin had started to make little gasping sounds. By the time I got downstairs with him, a couple of seconds later, his color had returned to normal and he was awake and seemed perfectly fine.

I, on the other hand, was not fine. We all had a little family sit-down-on-the-floor-in-the-livingroom-moment because I couldn’t stand. After a couple of minutes I took Calvin out on our porch and let the cool evening air continue to calm me down. Eventually, Calvin and I headed back upstairs and continued our night time routine of bathing, taking a bottle and then going to sleep. That is, Calvin went to sleep. I tried sleeping but couldn’t so I got up and finished reading Boneshaker, our book club choice for the month. After I finished it, I went back upstairs and finally managed to fall asleep sometime past midnight.

This morning I called Calvin’s pediatrician’s office and talked to the pediatric nurse who was very blasé about the situation. She assured me that breath holding spells are actually quite common when children are upset or in pain and nothing to be concerned about. If I suspect Calvin is going to have another spell, I should lay him down on his back so he doesn’t hit his head if he loses consciousness. After losing consciousness, he should start breathing again within a couple of seconds.

When I took Calvin to daycare, I mentioned it to them so they wouldn’t be surprised if it happens again. Ms Amy told me that she had another kid do this and sometimes blowing a puff of air into their face would startle them enough they would start breathing again. After that, I continued reading a parenting book I had checked out, If your kid eats this book, everything will still be okay, and discovered just a couple of pages after where I had previously stopped, Zibners also discusses toddlers holding their breath. So, it appears this really is a fairly common thing for toddlers to go through.

I think I’ve mostly recovered from the experience but I hope this is a one-time thing and not the start of a trend!